Pepper Design Blog

Our Sunday Adventure & Other Mother’s Day Ramblings

To all of you lovely ladies out there that spend your time caring for and nurturing someone in your life, Happy {belated} Mother’s Day to you! I am elated at this crazy journey called motherhood and I am constantly amazed at the ever-changing emotions that accompany this huge, colossal responsibility and joy that so many of us experience.

I might get a little gushy on you today…

To sum it up: life as a mom is sweet. It’s an incomparable feeling that overcomes you as you watch with pride when the mini-me wobbles from the coffee table with full confidence, or perhaps when they reach up to you, eyes searching after a skinned knee or a scary siren, or maybe it’s the stolen kisses when you’re sure they’re not looking and they’re definitely not suspecting.

Life as a mom is sweet.

The little person that we are entrusted with is the greatest gift – and although I’m quite amazed at the uber fast development of their little person, sometimes I am completely caught off guard at the development that I’m going through as a parent to keep up.

Who knew a brain could become so saturated with mom-isms? Suddenly I’m awake in the middle of the night knowing that Liv’s little toes are cold and that socks are required pronto, or that there are 50 new, unconsidered dangers on that seemingly innocent playground, or that the best and most comforting way to fall asleep is with a well trained eyebrow rub that will soothe my tired baby at the end of a long day.

The funny thing is, I always knew that I wanted to be a mom and that I would love every minute of it. But I really wasn’t in any rush to join the mom gang. We waited several years after getting marriage to have a baby and even when we made that big decision (that’s one etch-a-sketch that can’t be undid – Juno, anyone?) the back of my mind still teamed with anxiety about pushing ‘everything’ aside to make room for anything else. Even with the eager anticipation of a new member of our family, I thought my entire world would change.

It did – but it didn’t. What I found on my journey is that reorganization might be required, but there is no pushing of who you are into any deep dark corners of the closet to be forgotten. Instead, that layer of mommy-hood is added to the unique makeup of who you are, and the depth of your being is now one padding thicker.

I feel immensely blessed that I can still work full time (my career and my goals in the business world were at the forefront of my nervous-nancy anxiety), and I feel whole having a job as I also nurture my little family (especially knowing that the latter always comes first). I have learned that in my unique way I can do both, and that the ‘corporate world drive’ that many young women feel is actually all about finding your niche – be it as the president of a company, an entrepreneur, a teacher, a full time mom.

What’s best about motherhood? What I most cherish is the everyday, crazy realization that I am loved by my daughter unconditionally, selflessly, devotingly. And I have come to realize that my greatest goal as a mom is to make sure that my entrusted little beings know that I feel the exact same way.

Becoming a mom is overwhelming, right? It can’t be just us new moms that feel those frequent waves of awesomeness – and I hope the surprise of it never gets old.

Ahhh there’s my gushiness – my heart on my sleeve.

Back to how we spent our Mother’s Day because I’d love to share a few pictures with you.

Oh what a beautiful day! My request this year was that we have a casual, lazy family day filled with little more than walking the grounds of some beautiful place (park, beach, downtown anywhere) with a vanilla latte and camera in hand. I wanted to picnic, play and wander for a good chunk of day.

What better place in San Diego than Balboa Park?

Kevin made a delicious little lunch that we enjoyed in a secret, empty nook of the giant park (which houses museums, fountains and flower beds galore) and then we played.

Liv is at that age where she’s curious, you can see it in those giant brown eyes of hers whether she’s learning how to smell a flower, what a butterfly painted on a wall is or how to scale extra large tree roots – before she turns to daddy and begs to be brought back down to the steady ground.

Oh boy is she ever curious!

If you’re wondering if she tipped right in alas she did not – but look at that cute bum! She was awfully darn close.

One of my favorite stops on the usual Balboa stroll includes the Botanical Gardens (+ that stunning Organ Pavilion — see top top pic of the outside theater).

Here’s the outside of the old metal arboretum, and a peek inside.

Enjoying the day as a family with little to-do list stress was such a treat!

I hope your Mother’s Day was equally special and that the little persons in your life (be they kids, grandkids, nieces or nephews, students or anything in between) appreciated you for the wonderful person that you are. Happy belated Mother’s Day .

Happy (belated) Earth Day!

Happy Monday! Hope you had a great weekend!

Did you do anything special for Earth Day on Sunday? San Diego celebrates Earth Day in a big way. The city hosts a big outdoor food and music expo in Balboa Park, one of our prettiest attractions, and it’s so popular that people usually have to be bussed in from different areas around town.

We decided to avoid the crowds though to get one with nature on a family hike along Torrey Pines State Beach and up the trails of the crawling shoreline canyons. It was a chilly afternoon but usually that equates to perfect hiking weather.

Rocks were by far the coolest part of the hike for Liv. Searching through the river rock (where the river arms meet the ocean) was like a giant treasure hunt and the treasures just kept on coming.

It’s not always this rocky at the beach, but around this time of the year we get big wind storms that move debris on and off the sand for a couple of months.

Living so close to the ocean means we don’t visit it often enough. It’s a horrible self-fulfilling prophesy. But this day more than made up for a few months of staying away.

In other news, Liv recently mastered the fist bump. Boo-ya.

Speaking of Earth Day, we try our best to be aware of our impact on this big old planet at home. There is so much more that our family can do to improve our green-ness, but hopefully making little changes on a regular basis will eventually get us there.

Here are a few of my favorites in the Green department:

Reusable bags: These bags come in a pack of six and are invaluable around the house and in the car on the go. I use Waste-Less bags at home to collect dry cleaning, toys and clothing we have to return to friends, dirty rags getting ready for the washing machine, and when out and about for groceries and the like.

They’re so awesome! and so durable. This particular set of bags is slowly helping me to phase out the plastic and paper versions, even thought it can be so hard to remember to tote them along when running errands. It’s helpful that they’re very easy to travel with since they wrap up to about the size of a large chapstick and have a built in velcro band to keep them compact and small.

Compostable Trash Bags: When it comes to phasing out plastic bags around the house, I’m trying to get rid of them completely. But that’s not always possible with pets and a diaper changing station, never mind the bags that line the kitchen trash bin.

For those areas I use compostable bags and I’ve had the best luck with EcoSafe. These bags are great for lining our little trash cans in the house (like the one that collects dirty wipes in the nursery) and at picking up after Bodie.

For our 13 gallon kitchen trash, my favorite is PrideGreen. The 2 year shelf life before any sign of breaking down means that these guys are strong, no degrading on you as you’re hauling from the kitchen to the outside garbage bins, but they will eventually break down in a landfill environment.

I bought a box of these sometime last year and we’re still working our way through it.

Compost Pail: We keep one of these guys under our kitchen sink. All food scraps for our worm bin (other than citrus, the worms can’t process citris) go into the Norpro 1 gallon compost pail, and the contents of the pail are added to the bin a couple of times a week. 1 gallon is a great size for a small family.

The filter that’s built into the lid of this indoor compost pail means that we don’t ever smell it, ever, and it’s so nice to know that our food waste won’t be trapped in a plastic bag in a landfill somewhere, but will instead be added back to our garden to nourish more vegetables and continue on in the circle of life. The usual style of outdoor composting is pretty easy if you’re not the worm bin type, too.

Cooking: Our new favorite cookbook around here is the amazing vegetarian Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi. We’re meat lovers, but more often than not our meals these days have been primarily veggie based. We participate in a CSA group (more about that here) and have a box of local fruits and vegetables delivered every other week, and on our off weeks we hit up the Farmer’s Market. This cookbook is full of amazing deliciousness if you’re a vegetable loving foodie ready to experiment – I highly recommend.

My favorite so far is probably the roasted sage pumpkin wedges.

Cleaning Products: Mrs. Meyer’s is my favorite when it comes to cleaning supplies. I’m also a huge fan of plain old diluted vinegar as an all purpose cleaner, but not a huge fan of the smell (a vinegar covered countertop is not always the most appetizing) so I usually find myself buying the below in packs of six on Amazon, storing the excess in the garage, and refilling my indoor spray bottles with half diluted vinegar (4:1 ratio with water) and half Mrs. Meyers All Purpose in Basil (love that smell!).

The dish washing soap smells just as good, too. Above Mrs. Meyer’s Countertop Spray, Mrs. Meyer’s All Purpose Cleaner in Basil (to refill the counter top spray and for mopping) and Mrs. Meyer’s Dish Soap all in basil.

Cloth Diapers: I owe an update on our cloth diapering adventure, but suffice to say that we still love it and are still going strong with nearly 100% cloth (I use disposables just when traveling). I have several favorite brands but two that I’m most recently reaching for first are bumGenius (the FreeTime, 3.0s and Elemental) and Swaddlebees (2.0) with a Bummis biodegradable liner. When it comes to wipes, I prefer cloth with warm water or these flushable versions that we subscribe to with Amazon to have delivered every 3 months.

There we are, that’s the line up! These are my favorite products that come to mind first with helping our fam to leave a less obvious footprint for Liv’s generation and grandchildren after that.

Do you have any favorite green products you’d like to share? How did you spend your Earth Day?

Just a quick note that there are a few Amazon affiliate links in this post, but these are all favorite, well-loved products in our casa.

Halloween Fun!

As promised, a few pics from our night of Halloween fun.

We began the evening with a trip around the block with all of the kiddies in their adorable costumes and ended the night with a delicious potluck at the house.

Here are a few shots from before the sun went down:

Look at that adorable Cowardly Lion! Such a cutie.

Here’s a group shot just before we headed out for a little trick o’ treating:

Awesome costumes! See that family of five there to the right? They’re ‘Gang-Green’, so great.

A close up of a few more costumes:

Our family theme was the Wizard of Oz – but Kev didn’t have much time for his Tin Man costume (despite the Awesome radiator cover I found) and ended up as a robot . Bodie was our Scarecrow but we forgot to dress him up for pictures!

Found Liv’s costume on eBay a couple of weeks ago. Such a treasure trove of discounted goodies!

Kev’s big day-of project were these ‘carved’ pumpkins. We didn’t do any real carving this year (maybe when Liv’s a bit older) but for some spooky ambiance Kevin picked up these guys from the local grocery store for $2 a pop, hollowed them out and drilled different sized holes in them. That’s my creative hubby!

Speaking of crafty ideas, my mom sent over pics from her latest Halloween party up in Northern California and I’m happy to say that this blogging/crafting business must run in the family.

Such a fun night. Liv might not remember it but we’ve captured plenty of adorable photos for her future wedding slideshow!